PEER1 pitches new public cloud unit at white-label partners

Hosting provider PEER1 has unwrapped a new public cloud division, called Zunicore, which it hopes will enable white-label cloud partners to get around some of the more common objections to the market.

The firm has already seen plenty of success with a VMware-based private cloud offering, but believes that providing a spectrum of different, overlapping cloud models will help it better address the market.

PEER1 has added several features to the Zunicore proposition that it claims will elevate its cloud above rivals, including customisable resource pools, pay-for-what-you-use billing and enterprise-class features such as free support, persistent SAN by default and an ambitious zero downtime SLA, according to general manager Greg Rusu.

It will be fast-tracking new features to market in response to customer feedback, which so far has been generally positive, Rusu said.

Although Zunicore as yet has no defined partner programme, Rusu told MicroScope that the firm was already thinking about models where it would be possible for partners to create their own value add around the offering.

"From a pricing standpoint our strategy is to incentivise to make it easy for resellers to partner with and offer Zunicore, but at the same time for there to be sufficient capabilities and flexibility that we feel it's possible for them to provide value on top of what comes out of the box," said Rusu.

Among the options being considered are the possibility of developing and launching a cloud app store to give white-labellers another string to their bow.

This week, IndependenceIT unveiled the 4.0 version of Cloud Workspace Suite, which features a number of enhancements; Knowledge Vault launched a partner program for its cloud-based analytics-as-a-service platform; and more.

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